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IN FEBRUARY, before the coronavirus epidemic became a pandemic, I took the plunge and got rid of my car. I figured it would be no great sacrifice: I live in London within walking distance of three tube stations and countless bus stops. I own a bike. There are taxis and Ubers; supermarkets deliver. I joined a car-share scheme and earmarked the not inconsiderable sum of money I was spending on keeping my car on the road to fund my green transport future.

Then the lockdown happened and being car-free suddenly felt like a sacrifice. I couldn鈥檛 get a supermarket delivery slot. I couldn鈥檛 take my broken garden chairs to the recycling centre. A few days into lockdown, somebody stole my bike from a supposedly secure lock-up.

When lockdown eased, it just got worse. We yearned to escape to the countryside or beach, but taking public transport or a taxi felt like too much of a risk.

The car-share scheme turned out to be mind-bogglingly complicated 鈥� every London borough has its own rules about where you can and can鈥檛 park, and taking a car-share vehicle beyond the city is practically impossible. I still couldn鈥檛 get a supermarket delivery slot or a new bike. Hiring a car is phenomenally expensive and time-consuming. A 24-hour hire to drop my son off at university consumed more than two months of my mobility fund.

So last month I did a U-turn and bought a car. I felt guilt and failure, but also a sense of justification: I had tried, but the pandemic defeated me. Most of all I felt liberated. I鈥檝e already put a few hundred miles on the clock. Don鈥檛 get me wrong, I haven鈥檛 converted to petrolhedonism (it is a petrol car, though a very efficient one. I looked into electric cars and hybrids, but they cost too much). I still aspire to be able to travel without spewing greenhouse gases and pollution and without having to possess a big contraption comprising metal, glass, plastic, rubber, fabric and oil that will one day end up on a scrapheap 鈥� or possibly become a .

鈥淯nfortunately, the car is deeply embedded in our way of life as the core of a socio-technical system鈥�

Before I took the plunge back into car ownership, I decided to do my research, not just on keeping my emissions down, but also on progress towards a future that is less reliant on private vehicles. Sure, the pandemic made it more difficult to go car-free, but I suspect that my failure was also down to structural factors. The world is still not geared up for car-free living. So I tuned in to an online seminar called 鈥溾�� by Peter Wells at Cardiff Business School in the UK.

Wells works on , which aims to understand and explain major social changes. From this perspective, he said, the car is deeply embedded in our way of life as the core of a socio-technical system that also includes roads, garages, oil refineries, insurance companies and manufacturers. This system has been dominant for decades, but before the pandemic it was starting to creak under the weight of overcrowded roads and the environmental crisis.

The hope was that we would eventually shift to a shared fleet of autonomous vehicles powered by renewable electricity. In this scenario, nobody owns a car or even drives one. We just jump into the nearest available self-driving car and go. And then came the pandemic, and the whole dynamic shifted again. In what direction, however, is very hard to say.

Crises are often a trigger for socio-technical transitions, Wells said. That idea has become very familiar, with the pandemic often presented as an opportunity to rethink, reset and build back better. I have written about how it might change attitudes to hyperconsumption, for example.

That is possible with transport, Wells said. Life in a pandemic has drawn attention to some of the downsides of mass mobility, such as time and money wasted commuting to offices we don鈥檛 need as much as we thought. It has also emphasised our need to recalibrate our relationship with the environment and get fitter, which might nudge us towards cycling and walking more. Infrastructure changes, such as new cycle lanes, are propelling us in the same direction.

Or maybe not. 鈥淔or the car industry this hasn鈥檛 been all bad,鈥� Wells said. 鈥淧roblems with the public transport sector, the unwillingness of individuals to risk that trip, has meant that the ownership and use of a car has become quite a useful thing.鈥�

At the start of the pandemic, I bought into the idea that it could be a game changer for the environment. Now I鈥檓 not so sure, at least for private cars. Current circumstances have turbocharged the question of how far we really are down the road to that transition. I reluctantly submit my answer: not very, and driving in the wrong direction.